1. Field of the Disclosed Embodiments
This disclosure relates to systems and methods for facilitating more complete toner emptying from nearly-depleted toner bottles while maintaining image quality in toner-based image forming devices.
2. Related Art
Certain image forming devices use charged toner particles as the marking material for image forming on image receiving substrates. The term “toner” generally refers to a powder-like particle material used as the marking material in image forming devices such as xerographic image forming devices and photocopiers to form printed text and images on image receiving substrates.
Toner is typically packaged in containers of differing sizes, shapes and compositions. These containers are often injection or blow molded container products. The containers may be generically referred to as “toner cartridges” or “toner bottles.” Toner cartridges or bottles are most often formed as closed containers in which the toner material is conveniently packaged for supply to customers and/or end users. The customers and/or end users need never interact directly with the toner material powder itself. The toner cartridges or bottles rather are customer replaceable consumables components that the customers or end-users install as complete customer replaceable units or CRUs in the image forming devices. The toner cartridges or bottles may be opened for access to the toner material by the image forming devices themselves once the toner cartridges or bottles are installed in the image forming devices.
Image forming devices today include monitoring capabilities for monitoring levels of all consumables, including toner material in one or more toner cartridges or bottles. Upon an indication that any consumable, including the toner material in a particular toner cartridge or bottle, is nearly exhausted, the prudent customer or end-user will procure a replacement consumable component, in this case a toner cartridge or bottle, to have it at the ready. In this manner, when the image forming device advises the customer or end-user that the toner material is nearly or actually exhausted, the customer or end user need only remove the exhausted consumable component as a unit and replace it with a fresh, full consumable component, e.g., toner cartridge or bottle. In the image forming devices, particularly office-sized image forming devices, it is important to not preemptively discard consumables packaging that may have available and usable consumable material still housed therein.
Conventionally, in charged toner-based electrostatographic and xerographic image forming devices including, for example, printer and/or copier systems, toner cartridges and/or bottles may have sensors mounted on, or otherwise associated with, them to detect if the toner cartridge or bottle is depleted or nearly empty, and/or to inform the customer or end-user of an operating status of the toner cartridge or bottle. The attached sensors may communicate with the data receiving components in the image forming device to produce the notifications. Notifications may be graduated such that for a near empty cartridge or bottle the customer or end-user may be informed to order a replacement toner cartridge or bottle, and for an empty cartridge or bottle the customer or end-user may be informed to replace the cartridge or bottle.
Because device volume in office-sized printing/coping systems is very high, and price pressure and competition in this market space is severe, any unit material cost savings, particularly with regard to consumables, may have a huge impact on sales and profits. In this regard, there is a trend toward eliminating the sensors that detect toner cartridge or bottle empty conditions and/or produce “replace” alerts. The current trend is toward replacing these sensors with certain comprehensive algorithms to accomplish the “detection” and alert functions. In this regard, a monitor of toner dispense rates and toner control parameters replaces actual affixed sensors and associated sensor reader systems in the image forming devices.
These toner used/toner remaining estimation methodologies tend to be conservative in order that users do not find themselves in a situation in which, for example, an image forming device is exhausted of a marking material particularly at a critical time in which the customer or end-user may require that the particular image forming device necessarily perform imaging operations. Customers and/or end-users can be particularly sensitive to non-alerted exhaustion of toner materials leading to customer and/or end-user dissatisfaction. Exhaustion of toner materials during imaging operations results in poor image quality for the remaining images as well as certain difficulties with downtime for the machine while additional marking materials, for example, are procured and installed.
An equally dissatisfying difficulty arises, however, when the toner used/toner remaining estimation methodologies are too conservative in that significant amounts of toner material may actually remain in the toner cartridge or bottle when a declared depleted or empty indication is provided to the customer or end-user. This condition may have significant impact on a business case in that customers and/or end-users may find themselves being forced to replace toner cartridges or bottles at a higher than necessary rate. When it is determined that a significant amount of toner material may remain in an indicated-exhausted toner cartridge or bottle, the customer and/or end-user may be equally dissatisfying and having to incur such waste.
For example, currently available methods are in the boundary of both mean and standard deviations for the business case of the products in the market, but may not generally meet line of business (LOB) requirements for next generation products due to competitions in the market.